Day 31 - Shadowlands @daily-writing-challenge Co-written with @taricdarkmorn for his Day 31 as well!
Red awoke with a startle, bolting up into a seated position on the couch as a chill ran up his spine and down his extremities. Eyes wide with panic, he looked around and realized that he was still in Taric’s apartment, with Taric himself staring down at him and a worried expression on his face. He felt all sorts of discombobulated, as if half of him were here and present in the other man’s apartment, and the other half somewhere floating around the Shadowlands.
“I had to bring you back.” Taric placed a hand to Red’s arm as a means to ground him. “You okay, what did you see?” He grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch and pulled it over his shivering uncle’s shoulders. The man was freezing cold to the touch, as if he had just been submerged in icy water.
Red blinked a few times just to ensure that this wasn’t some sort of hallucination, reaching over to pat and then grip at Taric’s arm; he at least felt real. He breathed in the warm air and immediately broke into a coughing fit, prompting Taric to rush into the kitchen to grab him a glass of water. For a while his breathing was labored and he had to gasp for air a few times, but eventually his lungs adapted to the warmer temperature and he was able to breathe normally.
Taric gave him his space, lighting up what looked like a stick of incense near the other man; something to help calm him and help him breathe easier. He wasn’t going to rush him into speaking, Taric knew all too well how it felt to come back from a ‘deeper’ exploration of the Shadowlands. Although this had seemed much more intense than the usual trips: If Taric hadn’t been there acting as a tether, Red may have never come back.
“It was like…” Red furrowed his brow as he attempted to make sense of what he had experienced. “..being caught in a violent storm, but then I was suddenly drowning and choking in this murky swamp.” He rubbed at his throat, coughing a few more times into the crook of his elbow and taking a moment for himself to collect his thoughts again. It felt as if all of this had lasted hours, but glancing at the clock he then realized he had only been ‘gone’ for a little over five minutes.
Taric stared in horror, this sounded nothing like the previous journeys he had taken before, but the Shadowlands were vast and seemingly unending. No single trip had ever been the same, there were infinite ‘afterlives’ to experience. He offered Red a hand-rolled cigarette, some special blend of his creation that would calm the other man.
“I couldn’t see much at first, all just blurred colors and a feeling. I remember it felt like my blood was boiling beneath my flesh and then suddenly it was freezing cold. I could finally focus a little better, but all I could see at that point was ice; a frozen landscape. It reminded me of Icecrown, but...worse?” He shivered again and reached for the offered cigarette, giving it a quick light. Eyes fluttered shut as he inhaled, feeling a little more like himself as the seconds ticked by. “Colder, more blustery. It looked like there were bodies frozen in the ice, all contorted…” He shook his head and leaned back against the couch cushion, exhaling a cloud of smoke up towards the ceiling. “That’s about when you pulled me back. I think I was in the M-”
Taric interrupted him with a brief, “I know.” He didn’t need to finish that sentence, he didn’t want him to finish that sentence. “You were...” Taric gestured, trying to put what was happening into words. “...mmm, it was like all of that was happening to your body here.”
Well that wasn’t normal; not that either had much comparison given this was something done in very rare cases. Physically entering and remaining within the Vale could be dangerous enough, but astral projection into the Shadowlands proper had its own separate set of difficulties and danger. While all of those in the Darkmorn family were capable, it wasn’t done very often and usually only for emergencies. This, however, constituted an emergency, so it was well worth the risk. Plus, with the two of them working together they figured there would be a greater chance of nothing going terribly wrong. They were lucky Taric reeled Red back when he did.
Red kept his eyes shut, attempting to picture all he had seen in his mind to try and describe it better. That was the strange thing about the entire process, no matter how real it had all looked and felt, the details were forgotten quickly. “I remember feeling more and more anxious as time went on, like all of this was building up to something big that I couldn’t quite see. And I just felt,” He pressed a hand to his chest, tapping it there a few times, “like I was being drained. Like everything around me was being drained of life, as weird as that sounds, all to feed this ‘big thing’ I was sinking into. It wasn’t just the ‘newly dead’ that it was happening to, it was the established as well. There’s just...this feeling on the tip of my brain I can’t quite reach.”
Taric leaned back in his chair, cupping his chin in thought as he mused aloud. “Like everything is connected. Just one long chain of events that stretches far back.”
“And you could see everything that has happened, and everything that is going to happen. A perfect pattern laid out that has us all trapped within, where all the lines suddenly converge.”
The two men stared at each other in silence. It was so strange having someone you barely know already understand you so well; not questioning your train of thought, but being able to relate despite the incongruities and the implausibilities. Most others would probably think all of this to be preposterous and quite possibly assume the duo were insane, but they had both reached a sudden clarity in a very convoluted situation.
Taric pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “I have to pack a bag and tie up some loose ends here. I’ll meet you in Orgrimmar?”
Red nodded as he stood, the after-effects still making his thoughts fuzzy and his body heavy. “Yeah…” He clapped a hand to Taric’s shoulder as he passed him. “I’ll see you soon, and thanks.”
